As awareness of environmental issues has grown, logistics, supply chain, and shipping customers have become increasingly concerned with the impact of their transportation activities on the environment. Many customers are now requesting reports on the carbon footprint of their shipments, which they may use as gauges for purchasing carbon credits and for monitoring their environmental impact. Currently, transportation companies calculate the carbon dioxide emissions of shipments based on estimates of a given shipment's weight and the distance it is transported. In particular, standard emissions factors, such as those provided by the World Resources Institute (WRI), are applied to weight and distance statistics to estimate carbon dioxide emissions. These calculations are currently done manually and can take a significant amount of time to complete. In addition, the distance estimates and standard emissions factors used in the calculations do not take into account the efficiencies in the transportation process established by a transportation company.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for an improved system and method for calculating the emissions resulting from transporting a shipment through a transportation network.